SYDNEY resident Amanda Farrell doesn’t want her daughter to go to school in a concrete jungle.
She said she wants her daughter to ride her bike in the backyard, to play with neighbourhood kids, to know all the kids in her class at school and have room to run around.
Mrs Farrelll spent three days at Canobolas Public School last week and without talking to her husband Ben, she enrolled her daughter Charlotte.
“We’ve both wanted to get out of Sydney for a while and I had been calling him every night telling him how fantastic Orange was,” she said.
“I just said oh by the way I enrolled Charlotte here.
“He was pretty happy about it.”
Mrs Farrell said she lived in a small unit by the beach with her husband and three-year-old daughter. She said she wanted her daughter to grow up they way she di.,
“We lived in Baulkham Hills but we had a backyard to run around in,” she said.
“These days it’s too expensive to buy a house in Sydney.
“We just want a bit of land, a bit of space.”
Mrs Farrell said she wanted her daughter to have opportunities like dancing classes or sporting classes.
“It takes an hour in traffic just to get anywhere here,” she said.
Mrs Farrell said she chose Orange because the city had all of the facilities they wanted for their daughter.
“It has excellent sporting facilities and culture like the theatre, there’s everything she needs,” she said.
“It would also be nice to know our neighbours.”
Mrs Farrell said one of the down sides of moving to Orange would be finding a job.
“Everybody tells me it’s really hard to get a job if you’re a teacher,” she said.
“I’m hoping to maybe get a foot in the door through casual work and maybe get a full-time job that way,” she said.
Mrs Farrell said she will miss living near the beach and will miss the warmer weather.
“I’m not looking forward to the cold but it’s not a deal breaker,” she said.
Mrs Farrell is in her last year of study and hopes to move to Orange as soon as she finishes.